


The Beginning

by OctarineSparks



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Slightly gorey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-03
Updated: 2014-09-03
Packaged: 2018-02-16 00:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2248371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OctarineSparks/pseuds/OctarineSparks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If one day Dean asks Castiel why it took him forty years to pull him out of Hell, perhaps this is the story he will tell him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> My first SPN. Please be gentle.

It was a cold day in Heaven when the angels heard the news. 

Dean Winchester was in Hell. 

They wept and lamented, not for his tortured soul, but for the strife, and the bump in their wicked road. They had plans for that poor wretch, plans that could not be carried out while he was being torn to shreds in the valley of the lost. 

But angels, being angels, can adapt, and where they first saw catastrophe they now saw opportunity. 

He would break, sooner or later, as all the miserable human souls are wont to do. He would crumble and cave, take up a blade, and carve his own pain into another's flesh. He would spill blood in Hell, but that was fine, because he was a righteous man. 

First seal be broken, and let destiny fall in line like a good soldier. 

A good soldier. A soldier like Castiel. He was... Odd, that one. Everyone always said so. He was always a little too cautious, a little too kind. He thought too much, and he actually cared. A good soldier, but not a very good angel. 

They would send him to raise Dean from the pit. Hell is Hell, even for angels, and they all knew that when the time came, Castiel alone would volunteer. Others could be ordered to go and would obey, of course, but only Castiel would go willingly, born on wings not made of duty but compassion. 

It would take time, and it would be difficult. The others were loathe to admit it, but Castiel's funny little ways meant that he would succeed in his mission where others may not. 

They sent him to Earth to claim his vessel. He needed to be smaller, for Hell is awfully crowded. 

They showed him the way into Hell, through fire and agony and flame. They told him to be strong, to be brave, and to make his Father proud. Then they left him, alone. 

Castiel, armed only with his angel blade and his righteous fury, strode through the Gates of Hell with his head held high. The demons turned to look at him, and when they were not blinded by his light, he became afraid. 

Castiel had always been taught that demons were the lowest of creatures, broken things that burned in the light of Heaven. But they did not burn. They merely watched. And then they leapt. 

Agony and pain as he had never known flooded him. He was bound in chains made of razor blades dipped in poison. His skin shredded and peeled from his flesh, his eyes were scooped from their sockets and ground underfoot. He cried out, over and over, for his brothers, his sisters, for God, until they cut out his tongue. 

He was failing in his mission, and he was failing Dean Winchester. 

They said he was important, this human. That God had plans for him. But as the years passed and Castiel took painful steps closer and closer to him, he thought not of that but of one other, simple fact. 

Dean Winchester is a good man, with a good soul. Dean Winchester should not be here. 

He endured all the tortures they could throw at him, and refused when they tried to hand him the instruments. Demons are foolish creatures. Angels have no souls to break. 

On the thirtieth year, Castiel was bruised, bloody and damaged, but he was still whole. He was breaking down the walls with what remained of his grace, hiding in shadows from the demons and the pain. They always found him. They never thought to ask why an angel of The Lord was traversing Hell. 

He heard a sound, so faint amongst all the screams, but in his head it was so loud. A drop, a gentle, melodic sound. The ground beneath his feet shook, and he knew that his brother, the one who fell so long ago, was filled with joy. And Castiel wept for the righteous man until it became selfish to do so. Dean Winchester was broken, but he was not yet lost. 

Castiel found himself in a desert, endless and dry and unfeeling. The sun scorched his skin until it cracked with every step he took. He stopped leaving bloody footprints when his body no longer had the water to spare. And he walked, through the heat, through the pain, ever onwards to the righteous man. 

The fortieth year came, and Castiel was losing hope. He had endured for millennia up in Heaven, but four decades of Hell was carving something out of him and leaving something darker in its place. He could no longer hear the beating of Dean Winchester's heart, could no longer see the light that came from his soul. He feared that perhaps his good soul was not good anymore. 

He walked through halls of stone, past cages filled with the wretched and the damned. They called out to him, begging for forgiveness, pleading for rescue, screaming with anger. He ignored them all. The dark thing inside him didn't even care. 

He came to a room, large and circular, stained all over with blood. The walls were lined with the instruments of torture, instruments Castiel knew too well. 

And in the centre of this room stood the righteous man. 

Castiel almost fell to his knees and cried. He didn't smile, didn't thank his Father, he merely breathed out for the first time in forty years. He had found Dean Winchester. He had completed his mission.

The dark thing inside him flinched. It twisted and squirmed and pounded on the walls of his mind, demanding to be let out. Castiel looked ahead and saw a path of golden light between himself and Dean. 

The darkness saw the light, and it was afraid. 

Castiel saw the light, and he was afraid, too. He was apprehensive, and burdened, and blessed and terrified when he saw that bond. Profound, stretching from his grace to the soul of Dean Winchester. This would not be the last he saw of the righteous man, this man who was so important, this man who would very soon be the vessel into which all of Heaven's hopes were poured. This man who was, at that very moment, holding a knife to the throat of a woman who lay on the floor with chains through her wrists and ankles. 

Oh, Castiel was afraid. 

He did not know Dean Winchester's true purpose, did not know of Heaven's real intent for him. The others knew that Castiel, the rebellious one, would disagree. He could be forced, of course, like he had all those years ago in Egypt, but the fallout that came after was frankly more effort than it was worth. After the slaughter of the first born, Castiel had lamented and shouted and washed his hands over and over in the streams of Heaven, despairing when the blood would not come off. So they had made him forget it was even there at all. 

Castiel was a good soldier, who followed orders, but not a very good angel, because too much heart makes an angel rebel. 

He looked at Dean Winchester, inches away from ending the nightmare they had both endured, and watched. The righteous man looked down at his victim, his green eyes blazing. 

And Dean Winchester, for all he had fallen, hesitated. 

Castiel no longer could. He surged forward and gripped Dean tightly. So tight that Dean, who had been through agonies that not even Castiel knew, cried out in pain. The light of the angel burned deeply into Dean's battered soul, healing and marking and making it whole again. 

Castiel held on, wrapping Dean in Heaven's light and the light of their bond and for the first time in forty years, Castiel flew. 

Higher and higher, out of Hell and above the earth, searching and holding on, looking for a grave. 

With a final push, he let go of Dean's soul and watched it fall, down, down, down. The shockwave as Dean's soul was reunited with his body was immense, the power within enough to fell the trees all around. His body, dead and cold and rotting for so long, became new, save for the mark Castiel had burned into his soul. It manifested as a handprint on Dean's shoulder, proof of Castiel's efforts. 

Castiel waited until he heard Dean take his first breath, and then he returned to Heaven. But with a heavy heart. 

Dean Winchester may have been found, but Castiel looked at Heaven, at all that would come, and worried that he himself had been lost. 

He thought his mission was finished. Little did he know that it had only just begun.


End file.
